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rule number one : never get too attached to someone
that was the first thing her mother said when momo got her ua acceptance letter, to never get too close to anyone. all the pro-heroes in her family that she would look up to with wide awestruck eyes said the same thing; if people were too close, the chance for them to slip away, stab you in the back ( both literally and figuratively ) or just fucking break your heart was too high. the yaoyorozu’s always believed it was always better to keep people at arm’s-length, even if it was your own daughter.
rule number six : never ask stupid questions
momo had an odd obsession with space as a kid, and on one particular sunny afternoon she had found that pieces of the stars were in her hair. she was laying on her stomach in her enormous home library, poring over books over the stars and the galaxy, her long dark hair swaying at the sides of her head in two plaits. she read about jon larsen, a jazz musician who found that micrometeorites were everywhere. literally.
every single second of the day there were metric tons of stardust falling from the sky.
one of her aunts could literally glow — her skin would light up like a fucking glow stick, and her hair would whip around in the air like tendrils of a flame — and wide-eyed 7-year-old momo asked her if her quirk had something to do with the stardust in their atmosphere? probably not, my dear, she had answered, while ruffling momo’s midnight hair. but maybe, her aunt had continued, now having pulled momo in her lap, even if she was much too old, this stardust made people glow just the slightest, dragging other people into their little orbit. momo had replied that that was silly, and went back to reading.
rule number eighteen : observe from afar and never approach someone first unless they are in need of help
okay, maybe her aunt was right, momo mused to herself as their homeroom teacher gathered them around their school. momo finally got a chance to observe her classmates and two immediately caught her eye; aoyama, who, to be fair, was genuinely fucking sparkling , and jirou kyouka.
there was a part of her that wanted to approach them, because why not, and another part of herself that remembered another one of her familys’ many rules. jirou certainly didn’t look like she needed help, so momo resorted to just observing.
their eyes look like they had stardust in them. sunlight grazed their skin, and some rays reflected off of the small silver flecks in their eyes. momo shook her head.
nonsense.
rule number twenty-one : never break the rules in any setting. ever.
while momo was a stickler for most rules, she had grown to despise her parents’. or maybe that was simply because she had broken almost every single rule her parents had taught her during her time at ua, and she just didn’t want to admit it.
people had come dangerously close to her, and she had just let them. the most worrying part was that momo was happy; she was happy with the rules she had broken, the friends she had gained afterwards and the feeling of contentment floating around in her chest.
the smallest part of her mind kept reminding her that this was temporary, and that breaking rules always had consequences.
but for now, she let people come close. she let kyouka braid her hair and put little flowers in them. she let the girl play their guitar on her bed.
she let the girl make her feel loved.
rule number thirteen : never make promises you’re not guaranteed to keep
five months until graduation. five months until everyone had to get their shit together, more or less. five months until they could become actual heroes, even though they had been treated as such ever since they were first-years.
while everyone was on edge — the school year had been oddly uneventful, and it was like everyone was just anticipating for the moment it all went to absolute shit — momo and kyouka made a promise.
it wasn’t their first — and definitely not the first promise that broke momo’s rules as well — but to momo, it was the first promise that felt like it would matter in the future.
kyouka was laying on momo’s bed, letting her head hang off the side of it. they had grown out their hair during the school year — it was a group effort with denki to convince her to get a wolf cut — and a few of the strands were stuck to her forehead.
momo still saw stars in their eyes.
it didn’t matter if she had let the idea of stardust and its effects go years ago; jirou’s eyes had an obscene amount of stardust in them. it was the only excuse momo could think of that made herself feel better for always getting lost in them.
it was cliché, but she didn’t care.
“—an agency together.”
momo had not been listening.
“pardon?”
“i said,” jirou repeated, sitting up to face momo, “that we should like, set up a hero agency together after we graduate.”
“yea?”
“yea.” jirou’s eyes twinkled. honest to god, fucking twinkled. “y’know, like we can be like hawks! or something along those lines.”
“that sounds delightful!”
“let’s fucking do it! you promise to go through with a plan if we ever get one?”
“i’d do anything for you, jirou.” she wasn’t lying; she could never lie to them.
“that sounds like a promise to me,” they grinned.
rule number twenty six : never let anyone know how scared you are; put on a brave face
momo was on patrol with shouto and fumikage when shit finally hits the fan. it was almost miraculous how long class a had gone without any unexpected villain attacks or injuries or anything .
momo got a distress signal, and she watched the world warp into chaos just seconds after.
“this is creati. what’s the situation at hand?”
hanta’s voice is what greeted her from the other side of the comms. “five villains attempting to rob the shinsei bank at chosinsei street. a strength enhancer, some blade or metal manipulator, some weird smokescreen evasion type quirk and the two, we’re not entirely — KYOUKA.”
they cut out.
momo registers it before she even notices that hanta used their first name; fear is unmistakable in peoples’ voices.
rule number two : don’t let your emotions rile you up during a fight
the battle was already raging on when the three got to the scene. the strength enhancer was fighting with bakugou in a display of explosions and poorly placed punches out in the streets. hanta was practically whizzing through the air, jumping from roof to roof as a woman with metal arms — she reminded momo of ming-hua from that old cartoon kyouka liked — chased after them. patrols were usually done in groups of three to avoid any accidents.
kyouka was nowhere to be found.
“OI! on your left ponytail!” bakugou yelled from a few feet away.
a metal pole materialized in momo’s left hand just as the enemy — they looked to be a little older than them, and didn’t seem have any physical indications of a quirk; they had a sword gripped in their hands — jumped into her vicinity. metal against metal.
“looking for your precious little girlfriend aren’t you?” the person purrs. fear rises in the pit of momo’s stomach. “ah ah,” the person smiles wider, “don’t act so surprised. it’s written all over your face, darling.”
“target 4 can read emotions,” momo grits out into her comms. “fights with a sword. seems inexperienced, though.” which isn’t a lie.
a sword is slashed down, aimed to slice momo right in half. she doesn’t care; doesn’t care that she can fucking feel the sword miss her face by mere centimetres, doesn’t care that she can feel the bundled fear locked away in her chest unfurl and snake up her throat. all she cares about right now is that kyouka is missing and that she can’t see the remaining two enemies hanta had mentioned anywhere.
“i can just see the rage bouncing off of you,” the person snickered, stepping back a few steps. “you want to knock me out, don’t you? you know you can’t. you need—”
“shut the fuck up, will you?” momo swung the metal pole at the person’s neck. it was almost laughable how weak people with half-decent quirks thought that they could knock out a group of heroes-in-training.
down, down, down, the person falls.
momo starts running even before the head connects with the ground.
it takes 30 seconds for her to run up to fumikage who has already restrained one of the villains. another 15 for her to get flung through the gap in the wall of a building. these villains — or at least the ones they had been fighting in the streets — were probably low-level thugs; the silver-haired person kept glancing back at a building.
it takes maybe another 30 seconds before she hears them.
rule number fourteen : don’t break rule thirteen
multiple people are in the building, trying to find the remaining villains: hanta and shoto namely, but momo just knows that it’s them.
“kyouka?”
they only cough up blood in response.
shit shit shit shitshitshit
there’s blood everywhere, trailing down her face, dripping down her earphone jacks, covering every inch of her skin that momo can see. their right arm is bent at a grotesque angle and momo swears she can see a piece of bone sticking out. the arm that isn’t broken is hugging her sides, and momo guesses that some of their ribs are broken.
“can you breathe okay?”
it’s a stupid question, she knows, but it feels like if she doesn’t talk her throat is going to close up.
“not really?” kyouka lets out a gravelly laugh, then winces. “i regret doing that.”
“okay, we need to get you help. you can tell me what happened later, hm?” momo tries to conceal the panic in her voice but kyouka notices, of fucking course she does.
“don’t cry,” kyouka mumbles. “you’re gonna get wrinkles.”
“how can you joke in a situation like this?” momo asks.
momo presses her hand against kyouka’s cheek, ignoring the blood — she’s wiped enough of it from their ears to know that it theirs — and the sweat and grime. kyouka mumbles in the air between them and she has to stop herself from letting out another sob because this sounds like goodbye.
“well, if i’m gonna die,” kyouka’s eyes glaze over at this, “i can at least have my last words be something funny and not something tragic.”
“you’re not dying. not right now.” oh, she’s definitely gonna fucking cry. “not on me.”
kyouka doesn’t say anything. the girl with the stardust in their eyes fades, the glow around them ebbs away, but momo just can’t seem to let her go. not before the promise is fulfilled, not before—
“you made me promise, kyo,” momo sobs; her vision is flooded with white, black, everything in between, “you made me promise to set up a hero agency with you. i- i love you. i always have, so please, stay with me.”
kyouka’s eyes widened. “i loved you too.”
loved? loved?
if kyouka wasn’t dying right now, momo would’ve slapped them. there was no need for her to use past tense. that meant they had already given up; heroes weren’t supposed to give up, but momo didn’t have the heart to say anything.
she just pressed her forehead against theirs. they’re impossibly close, just like how they were never supposed to be, and how they were always supposed to be. as they fade, jirou is still pressed up against momo’s body. her left arm is draped across momo’s back, and her ear jacks hang limply at their sides, grazing the side of momo’s arms.
the stardust settles, and the glow dies out.
rules were made to be broken, but her mother was right, there were always repercussions.